


she'll know me crazy, soothe me daily

by stuckwithminusharry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adult Content, Auror Harry Potter, Canon Compliant, Canon Het Relationship, Canon Relationships, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Hand Jobs, Head Auror Harry Potter, Home, Married Couple, Married Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Married Life, Married Sex, Post-Canon, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, Quidditch Player Ginny Weasley, Reunion Sex, Reunions, Rituals, Sexual Content, Shower Sex, Smut, Traditions, coming home, does this count as fluff ? hm, post-epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 17:56:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17370677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuckwithminusharry/pseuds/stuckwithminusharry
Summary: Alternatively titled "Rituals".Harry comes home.





	she'll know me crazy, soothe me daily

**Author's Note:**

> Look. I've had QUITE the start into the year. My bank account is screaming. So am I. My faith in the universe is shaking. So I'm treating myself by posting this incredibly self-indulgent Hinny smut that absolutely nobody asked for and that I wrote anyway, because fic is inherently self-indulgent and also because I CAN. Put on Jackie and Wilson by Hozier and enjoy!

Harry comes home at 5:23 in the afternoon, on a Tuesday, November 14th, 2019.

Once he’s apparated to the usual spot behind the house, between the back door and the living room window, he carefully looks around the garden and only shakes off the Invisibility Cloak once a silent spell confirms he’s alone.

He steps out from behind the Disillusionment Charm that surrounds the spot, still with his wand half-raised. As he limps across the long, wild grass on the way to the front of the house, he makes sure to knock on the old, hand-painted flower pot that’s sitting upside down on the bench near the apple trees. Three times.

When James knocked it over a few summers back, three pieces broke off. Lily was furious: those were her hand-painted flowers, bugs, and sun, after all, that her brother had destroyed.

It was Al who came up with the idea for the charm.

Now, several hundred miles further North, three small pieces of pottery will vibrate in his children’s pockets at his knock. The signal he knows they have been waiting for.

_Dad is home._

He double-checks the front door by force of habit: Signs of forced entry. Traces of Black magic. Six security spells later, he finds the house as empty as it should be.

Nothing is wrong.

In the end, he peers into every room anyway. Only then does he follow the corridor from the living room back to the front door. There, he reaches for the stack of Daily Prophets by the door, slowly letting out the breath he was holding when he finds the front pages void of his family’s faces. Newspapers are always hard to come by when undercover. And he always has to make sure he doesn’t let his mind travel too far down that road when he’s away.

There’s a golden plaque fixed on a wall in the entrance hall, positioned so that every who enters the Potter home inevitably looks at it.

It’s the first award Ginny ever won with the Harpies. _Newcomer of the Year, 2002_ , it reads.

Harry carefully lifts the bottom of the plaque off the wall and reaches for the enchanted Galleon hidden on the back. He’s done it so many times, it only takes him seconds to leave the message.

_Home. Safe. Love you._

He gives her a full minute, but she’s done this as often as he has. She responds within moments.

 _21082014_ , the coin reads.

He puts it back in its hiding place with a small smile creeping across his face.

There’s half a plate of pasta left in the fridge. He doesn't bother to heat it up, noticing his growling stomach, and it doesn’t take him longer than five minutes to gulp the whole thing down. When he’s done, he finds himself staring at the photographs hanging over the kitchen counter.

August 21st, 2014. Their wedding day.

The occasion was private, with only a small circle of friends and family present. They miraculously managed to keep the press off it, and they never released the date. August 21st is a secret treasure, a day that belongs to them alone.

A response he will always recognise her by.

He takes off the outdoor robes and tosses the bundle on the stairs. The rest of his clothes end up on the bathroom floor before he steps into the shower.

He allows himself to stand under the hot, running water for ten full minutes before he starts doing anything else, letting the spray of the shower hit his face and his neck, willing the heat to untangle his muscles. Only then does he open his eyes and begin to wash the grime of the mission off of him, wishing, like he does every time, that the feeling it leaves behind was as easy to rinse off as the sweat and the dirt.

And least there’s not much blood to be cleaned up this time. All things considered, he’s come back looking much worse, he thinks to himself when he hears the front door open.

“I’m home”, calls Ginny’s voice from the hallway.

There’s a split second in which Harry tenses up: He turns his head towards the door, waiting. His wand, he knows, is lying on the shower mat next to his Auror robes, he’ll need two seconds to get to it, and if he’s about to be killed by an imposter, at least the real Ginny will have a good laugh when she sees him, naked, slippery, and half of his head covered in shampoo foam.

“Do you still feel like pizza?”

The tension that holds Harry’s body in its fist loosens its grip on him. This ritual of theirs is a precaution as much as it is a promise: When he leaves for a mission, or when she’s away for some Quidditch report, they agree on arbitrary details for the night they return. More often that not, it’s dinner, what film they’re watching, or a joke they made before saying goodbye repeated back before saying hello again.

Just in case.

If she hadn’t mentioned the pizza they agreed on two weeks ago, he’d already be pointing his wand at the closed bathroom door.

“Hi. Sounds good.”

“Are you in the shower?”

“I’ll be out soon.”

“Fancy company?”

Yeah, definitely Ginny.

He considers declining. More than anything, because he knows he’s not good company when he’s like this. The quiet after a mission leaves him feeling restless and on edge: after two weeks spent acutely aware of his own mortality, his own home feels strangely unsettling in its peace and calm.

That the kids are all at Hogwarts now doesn’t help. And it’s always worst when he comes back from a mission as frustrated as he did from this one.

But this is Ginny. Ginny, who is far too wise and knows him far too well to take it personally. Who helps his feet connect with the ground again like no one else.

“Sure.”

He listens to the bathroom door open and close, then the quiet shuffling of clothes. Soon enough, he watches over his shoulder as she steps under the steaming spray of the shower and wraps her arms around him from behind.

“Hi”, she hums, pressing her lips between his shoulder blades. “How long have you been back?”

“Not long”, he mutters, leaning into her with his eyes closed. “Half an hour.”

“Let me do that”, she says, reaching for the bottle of shower gel. Harry hands it over without complaint and sighs when he feels her hands slip down his back.

“No life-threatening injuries this time, I see.”

“You say that like you’re surprised”, he teases quietly.

“I know my husband”, she mutters, and Harry can feel her grin against the back of his neck.

“One of them got my leg”, he says. “You can hardly tell, though. It’s just a bit red.”

“Gonna walk like an old man now, yeah?”

“Just for a bit.” He turns his head enough to look at her from the corner of his eyes. “I figured you need a laugh.”

She chuckles behind him. “So thoughtful. You don’t look happy, though.”

Harry huffs. Her hands wander down his shoulder, small and firm. Harry lets his head fall back and closes his eyes as her talented fingers find all the knots in his muscles.

“Two of them got away”, he mutters.

“I hate it when they do that.” She lets her closed fist roll down Harry’s spine, and he breathes out. “Who messed it up?”

“Me. I was in charge.” He hears her chuckle behind him, and sighs. “Stainthorpe.”

“Of course.”

Ginny wraps an arm around his waist and leans into him. Harry revels in the feeling of her naked body pressed against his, her soapy hands trailing along his stomach, her mouth on the nape of his neck.

“Merlin, I’ve missed you”, he mutters, and Ginny chuckles.

“Well, I don’t reckon you’ve had much time to think about me on that mission of yours”, she says into his ear, her fingers drawing lazy circles on his brown chest. Harry breathes out, willing her hand to move.

“Haven’t really had the privacy”, he says slowly. “With seven other people sleeping in the sodding tent …”

“And here I was thinking Aurors know a thing or two about stealth”, she says. Her hand slowly travels down the dark line of hair under his navel.

Harry lets his eyes fall shut. “Stealth … and Silencing Charms.”

He hears Ginny snort behind him. “Harry Potter, Head Auror, wanking under a Silencing Charm like a teenager. Cute.”

Harry opens his mouth to retaliate, but instead falls silent and bites his lip when Ginny’s hand finally wraps around him.

Merlin, yes, he has missed her.

“Patience”, she mutters, when Harry thrusts his hip into her slow, teasing movements.

“You’re making it really hard”, he mumbles.

“I think I’m making something else hard right now”, she says, and Harry laughs.

She doesn’t tease him for very long, though. Soon, her hand falls into a pattern of slow, rhythmic movements, and Harry presses a hand against the shower tiles to keep himself steady.

“Good?”

“You know it is”, he mutters, squeezing his eyes shut. “Merlin, Ginny.”

She doesn’t increase her pace and Harry doesn’t urge her on, letting her work him to the edge as slowly and deliberately as she pleases. For a few minutes there, he can allow everything but her to slip away as she takes the lead, and, yes, that is easily his favourite coming home ritual.

His orgasm washes over him, one slow wave after another. Ginny holds her body tightly against his until his breathing returns to normal; lets her hands trails along his thighs and his hip and his stomach as a deep, heavy drowsiness swoops over him.

“Feel any better?”

“Just a bit”, he mutters.

Ginny slaps his arse. Harry chuckles.

“Turn around”, she tells him. When he does, he leans into her almost on instinct: Revelling in the feeling of her soft, warm mouth on his as his hands slide down her back.

“Welcome back”, she says when he pulls back, her smile a bright, burning flame. Harry has tried on countless occasions to commit it to memory, but he always comes back to find he could never do it justice.

“I should never go on a mission ever again”, he tells her.

Ginny wipes his dripping hair out of his eyes, the dark curls plastered along his temples and forehead, seeming to take great pride in the sated, tranquil look on his face.

She knows him endlessly. So Harry reckons she’s perfectly aware he doesn’t joke about his job.

The thought has been there for a while now, at the back of his head. The question has, too.

When.

“That would take all the fun out of the reunions.”


End file.
